Italian-American flavor come together in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 Carroll Gardens is a large neighbourhood.
2 You can find gardens only in the front of the houses.
3 Walking around the neighbourhood used to take very long because you had to talk to a lot of people.
4 Brooklyn Bridge is within walking distance from Carroll Gardens.
5 There is no problem to park in Carroll Gardens.
6 Italians have been the only nationality to live in this neighbourhood.
7 In the 1970's you could buy a house for $50,000.
8 There's no room in the schools anymore.
It’s a beautiful little neighbourhood with these brown stones.
Beautiful trees on the street. People outside.
A lot of old-timers, a lot of families.
Lots of mom and pap stores. You come out of the subway station and it’s just… It’s a really special place.
This neighbourhood is only like maybe about only four blocks wide and when you’re on a corner is like two, three blocks in each direction, and that’s it.
Carroll Gardens was all part of Red Hook.
Back in the 60’s, I decided we’re going to call it Carroll Gardens. Carroll because of Carroll Park and gardens because we had this unique front gardens.
Carroll Gardens was laid out and built according to a master plan which asked for gardens in the front and in the back and it creates a pretty good mixed treescape.
All the restaurants typically have gardens. There’s a lot of outdoor seating.
It has a very much a small town feel within the larger city.
Growing up it would take twenty, thirty minutes to walk two blocks. You had to say hello to everybody and they would strike up a conversation.
The shoppers tended to go out of their way to actually learn who you are and get to know you.
The F and the G service Carroll Gardens primarily. I think a lot of people have a lot of hate relationship with the F train but if you’re going into Mid Town or downtown it’s a great mode of transportation.
It’s also close to Manhattan, you can literally walk from Carroll Garden over the Brooklyn Bridge.
What really shocked me was the amount of cabs you can get here.
The only problem is parking. You can’t park your car.
This neighbourhood used to be Scandinavian, mostly because of the seaport. As they moved out of the neighbourhood you had Italians who moved in first into Red Hook and then into what we now call Carroll Gardens.
When my father emigrated here back in 1909 or thereabouts, this was an Italian ghetto, desperately poor neighbourhood.
Al Capone got married here on Court Street.
Most of the people from this area came from an Italian town in Sicily called Pozzallo.
I was born and raised here and I think the whole world was Italian-American because everybody here was Italian-American.
You could buy a brownstone back in the 70’s for about 40,000, $50,000. People started coming in and it started changing. People that did live here, they can’t afford it.
When I first moved into this neighbourhood 30 years ago, if you wanted meat, you went to the butcher. If you wanted vegetables, you went to Florence on Court Street.
We’ve lost a lot of, you know, those mom and pap shops. I think for the first time it’s going to change for the worse. One of the reasons for this neighbourhood becoming so desirable is the schools. There’s no room in the schools anymore, so they’re putting these trailer units in the school yards and creating more classrooms.
Try to get your child into PS58 is very difficult, even if it’s you’re zoned for the school.
4,000 units are coming to market over the next two years and with that, where are all these kids gonna go to school?
Today the market is just fierce. You know, people will wanna buy a brownstone, they’re coming in ready. Rental prices are going up too.
I don't think there's anything that could make me leave other than getting priced out. You know, even now I walk the streets and it’s like oh, so-and-so used to live there, and so-and-so used to live there and people ask me like tell me what it was like back in the day here, you know, there was this tiny little area that nobody knew really about, and then word got out and spread like wildfire.
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